Last week, I wrote about an organization called Mayapedal, and how they are creating “bicycle machines” for families in Guatemala. Today I’d like to point your attention to an organization that has taken a slightly different approach: Technology for the Poor.

Don’t be fooled by their website. It is very crude and simple, as are their designs. Technology for the Poor has taken serious issues and designed very simple solutions for them. More importantly, the designs are such that they can be easily understood and replicated. There are no special parts needed to implement any of their technologies. In fact, most can be made with a few scrap pieces of material (or bikes) and a hack saw. From an engineering standpoint, these designs are extremely amazing. Their elegance (which is in part due to the fact that they are crude) is truly something other designs should aspire towards.

One of the devices that Technology for the Poor has developed is pedal powered attachment for a bicycle. Essentially, by taking some scrap parts from an old bicycle and a pulley, someone can easily turn a bicycle into something that can produce mechanical energy, useful for driving many machines. More impressive is the fact that the bicycle can then be picked up and ridden away.

I was fortunate enough to meet Job Ebenezer, founder of Technology for the Poor, a few weeks ago. He brought his bicycle and a few tools into the room, and three minutes later he told me to start pedaling. He proceeded to cut a piece of wood with a table saw that I was powering. We then removed the kernels from an ear of corn, and then drilled a hole in another piece of wood.

Job is truly an amazing individual. When distributing his technology, he does not hand it out, but shows it to individuals in these developing countries, explains how it works, and then lets these individuals build it themselves. He intentionally does not hand out instructions. When I asked him why, he explained that these individuals know their community better, so they could build a solution that was better suited to them. In addition, this means that there will never be any issues with repairing these machines.

Too often we see development groups going into a community with the belief that they know more than the locals about their problems. Job, in his work, does something different: he admits that he knows less than the local community members.

All in all, Technology for the Poor’s amazing technologies, combined with its culturally sensitive distribution methods makes it a top-notch organization.

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About the Author

Ben Salinas is a member of the fourth graduating class of Olin College of Engineering where he is focusing on Design. He is specifically passionate about how engineering, design, and entrepreneurship can be used to leverage a positive impact on the world. Ben is very interested in Appropriate Technology, International Development, and efforts to make them more culturally sensitive.

Just a few hours ago I was on the phone with a staffer from a major international youth organization committed to youth social entrepreneurship.

The staffer and I agreed that we needed many more change agents to address the ills of our peoples and planet. But we quite disagreed on this: he thought that youth would recognize the need for change and come up with ideas, made feasible by adult mentors. I said that, if youth were not being taught to think outside the box, they would not do so.

Neither our middle or high schools or universities are teaching, inspiring, and engaging youth to think and act outside the box. (For example, I get tired of never-ending voter-registration drives whose innovation is to bring a different band onto the stage. All glitz, no blitz.) In my e-mail archive is a telling example which I would hold up to anyone who chose to argue the point. Over a year ago, I communicated with a journalism teacher whose high-school students had won national awards over the years for the excellent school newspaper which they wrote and published. Since in the two issues which I skimmed there was only one passing reference to our community of Montebello, California, I offered to come speak for fifteen minutes once a week about the community. The teacher replied that if the students wanted to write about the community, they would. To which I politely retorted (is that an oxymoron?) that if the students did not know anything about the community, they were not going to write about it.

Maybe the author of A HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY should do A HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO PLANET EARTH? Life is so strangely humorous.

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About the Author

While an attorney by profession, Van is a social entrepreneur by passion. He develops concepts for social ventures and community programs–a delightful challenge–and then looks for collaborating students and faculty–a devilish challenge. Concepts include mass education through online lessons, micro-franchising, the promotion of fuel efficiency, pet care, at-risk teen males, and democratizing American democracy. He is very supportive of youth entrepreneurship, as expressed through Youth Venture, Students for the Advancement of Global Entrepreneurship, and Do Something, Van finds a major challenge in the generally irrelevant curriculum-from a community viewpoint-to which millions of high schoolers are subjected throughout the United States. Van received his J.D. from UCLA and his B.A. from California State University, Los Angeles.

If you’re reading this post right now, there is a strong likelihood that you are reading it on a computer. I don’t like paying fat electricity bills to my local electric utility and I’m willing to bet that you don’t either. Don’t you just wish that you could use a computer that didn’t consume so much electricity? Well, now you can.

Zonbu is a new company that sells energy efficient personal computers for just $99 with a 2 year subscription. Zonbu sells you a subscription because they provide you with service by taking care of any software updates you might need and any hardware problems that might arise. The Zonbu computer comes equipped (pre-installed) with all of the software you might need for gaming, web browsing, word processing, spreadsheets, movies, publishing, and gaming. (They use open source software.)

Not only does the Zonbu save you electricity, but it also offsets your carbon emissions from using your computer. For a breakdown on how much electricity the Zonbu can save you, see the table below.

This is a great example of how a company can create a product/service that is energy efficient and saves the end user from a fat electric bill. You can read more about Zonbu on Forbes, The New York Times, PC Magazine, and Popular Mechanics.

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Disclosure: At the time of the writing of this post, I have no financial relationships with any of the organizations mentioned.
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About the Author

Jonathan Chang is interested in new technologies which help individuals and organizations make a positive impact on society and the environment. He is also a proponent of long term thinking, supports the creation of renewable resources, and is an ardent advocate of social entrepreneurship. He is involved with and a member of Net Impact and the Commonwealth Club. (Net Impact is an international nonprofit organization whose mission is to make a positive impact on society by growing and strengthening a community of new leaders who use business to improve the world. The Commonwealth Club is the nation’s oldest and largest public affairs forum which organizes events on topics ranging across politics, culture, society and the economy.) Jon received his MBA from Babson College and his BA from Columbia University.

Last week I wrote about the benefits of hybrid electric vehicles, or HEVs. Driving in past generations of electric vehicles was like “driving with the gas light always on,” but plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) finally make personal electric transportation practical: you use electric power when you’re making small trips around town, but you have the full flexibility of a gasoline engine for longer trips. So now that we have this option, is running on electricity really cleaner than gasoline?

First, let’s talk energy efficiency.

A former thermodynamics professor once told me that electric cars were actually dirtier because, if you compared at the points of power generation, internal combustion engines (ICEs) are more efficient than power plants. Coal plants, the most common, are indeed around 33% energy efficient, compared to 37% in an internal combustion engine at optimal operation.

But at low speeds and with frequent stops — in other words, city driving — ICEs drop to 20% efficiency. And that’s not even the whole picture; consider all the energy that’s wasted on refining, trucking, and pumping the gasoline. Capturing petroleum energy consumes 1.23 Btu to produce 1 Btu of gasoline (45% efficient), which means that the overall system efficiency for ICEs drops to 17% highway and a shameful 9% city. When the efficiencies from the generation (33% efficient) and transmission and delivery (93% efficient) of electricity are stacked onto the 90% efficiency of an electric motor, the overall electricity-powered car system is 27% energy efficient.

So an electric motor has a higher energy efficiency than a gasoline-powered internal combustion engine. A reduced energy footprint is one big aspect of a successful Cleantech product, but there are more things that we must consider, like toxicity and, ultimately, economic viability. In part two next week I’ll address these aspects of PHEVs.

Disclosure: At the time of the writing of this post, I have no financial relationships with any of the organizations mentioned, except as explicitly indicated.

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About the Author

Asheen Phansey has filled both R&D and operations roles in various biotech firms and startups, and currently consults on biomimetic technologies for Aurora Flight Sciences, a maker of autonomous aircraft systems; he is now leveraging his experience in technology entrepreneurship into a career in Cleantech and sustainable business. He is excited to teach (and learn) about sustainable-business practices, such as cradle-to-cradle manufacturing and biomimicry, to the PosiPeople community. Asheen holds a BS in Chemical Engineering from Cornell University and is currently pursuing his MBA at Babson College; he is a huge New England Patriots fan, gets easily lost in books, and loves talking ideas with everyone he meets.

Jon’s blog entry about environmentally-sensitive household cleaners reminded me of another environmental issue that we face at the grocery store: paper or plastic? I am not referring to the bags used to package your groceries so that you can carry them out of the store. I mean the ones that you put individual items into to make it easier for the cashier. For example, I put each vegetable or fruit into a separate plastic bag so that it is easier to ring up at the cash register. On an average trip to the store, I might come home with 8-10 plastic bags of fruit, vegetables, or bulk food. I am hardly alone. Collectively, US consumers use between 500 billion and 1 trillion bags a year.

I am considering making the switch to using cloth bags when I shop for groceries. (I have no connection to this company and have only seen their products on the internet. I would be curious to hear other people’s experiences with cloth bags. Are they large enough? How many do you need? Can cashiers correctly read the produce item number without opening the bag?)

There are other steps consumers can take to minimize the environmental impact of their plastic bag usage beside switching to cloth. Stores and recycling centers will accept plastic bags. (You can find one that recycles near you.) You can also reuse plastic bags at the grocery store for shopping or at home as trash can liners, storage bags, food storage, and the list goes on.

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About the Author

Bea Bezmalinovic Dhebar is encouraged by the creativity, diversity, diffusion and fusion of ideas taking place among people around the world. She is particularly interested in the ways in which new entrepreneurial ventures - whether led by business, government or non-governmental organizations - can make a difference in our quality of life. Bea has worked extensively on international health and development issues with organizations as varied as Management Sciences for Health, the NetAid Foundation, Harvard Business School, Harvard School of Public Health, Partners in Population and Development, Save the Children, Aid to Artisans, the US Agency for International Development, the Overseas Development Council, and the International Center for Research on Women. She has lived or worked in more than 25 countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Bea received a Masters in Public Policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and recently returned to get an MBA from Babson College. She is fluent in Spanish and has some knowledge of Portuguese and Bengali.

When your dwelling is dirty and it needs a cleansing, what are your options to clean it? Well, you could use soap, water, and a ton of elbow grease, but most of us drop by our local market and pick up some cleaning products. However, one has to pause and think about how environmentally safe and how sustainably produced are these products. Most important, is it safe to have these products in the house near curious little ones?

So, where does one go to obtain cleaning products that are safe for the little ones and are sustainable? I have conducted a little research and have compiled a short list of companies which produce eco-friendly and sustainably produced cleaning products. By no means is this a complete list. So, feel free to add other companies I might have missed in the comments area below. The cleaning products from these companies might actually save you money in the long run and help you live a healthy lifestyle.

• Seventh Generation
• Method
• Sun & Earth
• Mia Rose
• Shaklee

As a bonus, you can watch a CNNMoney video about Seventh Generation, which seems to be the leader in this space. In the video, I appreciate Jeffrey Hollender’s (CEO of 7th Generation) enthusiasm for competition from the big players in this industry (Clorox, Arm & Hammer, and Proctor & Gamble). It seems that the larger companies understand that they can not continue to produce eco-unfriendly products in an unsustainable way.

Disclosure: At the time of the writing of this post, I have no financial relationships with any of the organizations mentioned.
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About the Author

Jonathan Chang is interested in new technologies which help individuals and organizations make a positive impact on society and the environment. He is also a proponent of long term thinking, supports the creation of renewable resources, and is an ardent advocate of social entrepreneurship. He is involved with and a member of Net Impact and the Commonwealth Club. (Net Impact is an international nonprofit organization whose mission is to make a positive impact on society by growing and strengthening a community of new leaders who use business to improve the world. The Commonwealth Club is the nation’s oldest and largest public affairs forum which organizes events on topics ranging across politics, culture, society and the economy.) Jon received his MBA from Babson College and his BA from Columbia University.